Page 111
Sliding one more under the door for this month’s update.
↓ Transcript
Panel 1 [The line whizzes speedily through boat's chockpin, vibrating with the tension]
Panel 2 [Lawrence and Josué hang onto the line as the boat rushes onwards, water kicking up over the bulwarks. Lawrence is cringing with an alarmed expression as Josué cackles. Ezra, in the foreground, has left his steering oar and is rushing over the benches to get to the bow of the boat.
JOSUE:
HahaHA! Here’s a sleigh ride for you, Manner! You don’t forget your first!
Panel 3 [Shot from behind Lawrence and Ezra as they hold the line, which is running out of the tub in spirals in the foreground. Ezra looks over his shoulder, pointing at it as he moves to switch places with Williams]
EZRA:
Wet that line ‘fore it burns!
Panel 4 [Close up shot of a bucket of water being dumped on the loggerhead as the rope twists around it, smoke rising from it.]
Panel 2 [Lawrence and Josué hang onto the line as the boat rushes onwards, water kicking up over the bulwarks. Lawrence is cringing with an alarmed expression as Josué cackles. Ezra, in the foreground, has left his steering oar and is rushing over the benches to get to the bow of the boat.
JOSUE:
HahaHA! Here’s a sleigh ride for you, Manner! You don’t forget your first!
Panel 3 [Shot from behind Lawrence and Ezra as they hold the line, which is running out of the tub in spirals in the foreground. Ezra looks over his shoulder, pointing at it as he moves to switch places with Williams]
EZRA:
Wet that line ‘fore it burns!
Panel 4 [Close up shot of a bucket of water being dumped on the loggerhead as the rope twists around it, smoke rising from it.]
I often wonder how much rope and cordage a ship went through on a voyage and now I’m considering the extra lines a whaler would use up or maybe lose to ‘the one that got away’.
If I remember correctly they carried lots plus a few bales of hemp or jute to make more but premade ropes might be more compact than the raw material ? or maybe not.
There’s a very nice original ship’s chandler relatively near here set up as it was in the 18th/19th century and it even has a ropewalk where they make lines, etc.
It’s not nearly as big inside as I’d expect, but I could still spend a whole day looking at everything a ship would need and I’d imagine larger ships would place their orders to be filled mostly from the warehouse not the sales floor and I know things were delivered to dockside because the big hand and horse carts still go up and down the streets laden with boxes and barrels.
Ahh, that’s so cool about the ship’s chandler! I love being able to see spaces like that and imagine them in their heyday.
With whale line specifically, whalers were commonly outfitted with around 30 coils for a voyage, not including other lines for other purposes. This is a really good aggregate of whaler provisioning: https://whalesite.org/whaling/stores.htm
What I’m not clear on is if those 30 coils are 30 actual coils, or 30 ‘packages’ from the New Bedford Cordage Company, as I’ve seen that the coils were sold in packages together of two 75 fathom lines (that would later be spliced aboard). So whalers carried either an average of 13,500 or 27,000 feet of whale line.
That doesn’t seem like much, not for ther number of whales they’d hunt on a several years long cruise.
As we see here, ropes tend to run hot whizzing around a capstan and salt water doesn’t do them much good either, that much friction and the abrasive salt would wear a line out pretty quick, tarred or not.
I’d think that 30x 150 fathom ‘packages’ would be barely enough. Assuming the average harpoon line might be 100 feet, that’s only a maximum of 270 to do up to four years in several whaleboats, maybe 50 lines per boat ? with four or five (or more) loaded in each time they launched ?
But, we know they did it so they must have carried enough.
Splicing parts of worn through lines together to make new ones might stretch the supplies out a little but I remember reading about supply ships sailing the hunting grounds where whaling ships could purchase more of their consumable items, so that might be what they counted on.
I think I’d prefer sailing on one of those, you don’t make as much profit per trip as a whaler but you can make more trips in the same time, and head back to port to restock.
They’d sell provisions as well and probably buy oil and sell empty barrels to let the whalers stay out longer.
The price they’d pay for oil might not be as good as in port but when you’re the only store for a thousand miles, you can charge what the market will bear 😉
That list, while certainly interesting and largely complete, includes some things like the ‘Pierce’s bomb lance gun’ and canned food that wouldn’t have been available to our stalwart crew in this epic.
I also wonder about the ‘Merchant Ship Inventory’ which isn’t included ? is the the basic needs to move a ship and keep it moving, or the stores one would replenish from a merchant ship they met along the way ?
The rations among other things seem a little scant for a three year trip.
Oh don’t worry, I’m quite aware of what this crew would have access to vs what’s on the list!
This was what a ship would leave its home port with, but the rations were expected to last about 5-6 months. Whalers would resupply usually every 6 months or so. It often wouldn’t happen between a merchant ship, though sometimes it did, circumstantially. But a number of merchant ships tended to disparage whalers, and many were also impatient when being spoken by one and didn’t like to stop. They had a place to be, whereas whalers were mostly lolling around their whaling grounds. Instead, resupply would happen in known whaling ports such as the Azores, Cape Verde, Talcahuano, Tumbes, Rio de Janeiro, Hawaii, etc.etc. as well as islands like the Marquesas, Cook Islands, Society Islands, etc.
Didn’t mean to suggest you didn’t know what was happening in your own story 😉
I was just comparing the facinating list you linked to against what was more contemporary to this timeframe.
From what I’ve read, restocking for most ships merchant/Naval/explorer/whaler, etc. was a routine event although the owners and Admiralty disliked it because the prices for supplies were higher the further you got from home and that cut into profits and increased operating costs.
A ship can only hold so much, provisions and supplies for three or four years plus three or four years worth of harvested oil doesn’t seem to fit inside very well…unless it’s HMS Tardis 😉
This is a unique strip with a rarely seen setting, keep up the good work, it’s a fun read.
The endless struggle between crew wellbeing and the profit margins!
And thank you!
I’ve been to the Azores several times, they’d certainly have needed the business 😉
Another amazing update 🙂 The difference in leadership style ‘tween the captain and the 2nd mate are so interesting. Josue’s excitement is palpable in that last page, its enthralling.
Thank you so much! Josué has a vested interest in this particular whale….he gets some extra cash money for raising it, if all goes well.
i am feeling some adrenaline! and fear for everyone’s fingers…and limbs…and lives in general. I was surprised to see them grabbing onto the rope, though I don’t know what else I expected. I just worry it’ll get tangled on someone’s hand somehow.
Many a fellow were indeed maimed or killed by whale line—it’s a spooky dangerous thing! Depending on what the whale did, it changed how they handled the line. If it sounded, they’d just let the line run out until it stopped (though sometimes a whale sounding could take out the entire line). If the whale ran horizontal along the water and was dragging the boat with it, they’d hang on and haul in on the line anytime it slacked to close the gap. If you’ve the stomach for it, there’s a fair amount of quasi-documentary footage of processes in the 1922 silent film Down to the Sea in Ships.
Most peg legs, eye patches and hooks for hands weren’t earned in battle but the result of ropes and lines.
A rope parting under heavy tension can kick back hard enough to very literally slice a man in two and a loose end flailing around in a high wind can pop an eye out like an icecream scoop. Getting a limb caught in a tangle or stepping into a loop of line while it’s paying out fast often does a cleaner job than a lot of Ships’ Dr’s. The amazing thing about people still working with such injuries in the Age of Sail isn’t that they did, it’s that there weren’t a lot more of them and it still happens today, commercial fisherman is rated as the most hazardous job. Not long ago one here got caught in the line for a lobster pot and pulled under long enough that it didn’t matter when they got him up again, unfortunately that normally happens once a year, sometimes more 🙁
Welp, that was one way to pass the entire night. Now I’m caught up, eager to see what’s next!
Thanks so much for reading! Next update will be the 19th of this month, unless you’re on patreon and then the pages are just published as I finish em!
Ran across this one this morning and had to share it
https://www.gocomics.com/looseparts/2023/07/15
Whalers definitely need some therapy, if their journals are anything to go by.